A Tale of Two Nubbins

If it were a movie, you wouldn’t believe it. This local news story is as uplifting and melodramatic as any Hallmark Hall of Fame program. And it all started with a feisty little dog named Nubbin.

The first half of the tale started on November 28, when Nubbin chased a groundhog and ended up caught in a fence. Nubbin is the only companion of Jessie Brothers, an elderly man who survives on disability with a host of health challenges while residing in a house he may soon lose. According to a neighbor, Brothers has no family (and, may I add, no perceived purpose in life) other than Nubbin.

Somehow Brothers managed to get his Jack Russell to a nearby clinic, where a stark diagnosis would change his life: Nubbin’s leg, broken in three places, would require complicated and extremely expensive surgery. If Brothers couldn’t afford it (and we already know he couldn’t), the only other alternative was to euthanize little Nubbin.

“My dog, my dog,” Brothers moaned as he crumpled in grief to the floor. A 911 call was placed and firemen (as the first responders) arrived on the scene. When one of them, Anthony Johnson, realized the tragedy that had prompted this emergency, he made the unusual choice of getting more deeply involved.

Johnson couldn’t begin to take on all of Brothers’ problems, but he could spare Nubbin’s life by paying for the surgery, and he knew just who to turn to for the best medical care—a veterinarian he’d met during a fire inspection. The vet agreed to take Nubbin’s case as part of an instructional component of his vet students’ classwork. And when an employee of the vet clinic recounted this story to her father, a retired fireman, he offered to pay for half of Nubbin’s medical care.

While Nubbin underwent surgery, Brothers was recovering at the aptly named Good Samaritan Hospital. His neighbor, the one mentioned earlier, picked him up from Good Samaritan and vowed to help him care for Nubbin during the dog’s crucial recuperation period. (If Nubbin’s leg doesn’t heal properly, he might need it amputated.) After surgery, the clinic staff began worrying about Nubbin, though: He seemed depressed, which could impede his healing. But as soon as the pooch caught sight of Brothers, Nubbin regained his vigor. Fireman Anthony Johnson stood by to witness the heartwarming reunion, and gratitude flowed in all directions.

End of story?

Not by a long shot. Across the country in Oklahoma was a woman who had a dream.

On December 1, Carla Kinnard dreamed that she and her husband, Jessie Kinnard, had at last found the biological father he’d spent years searching for online. Thinking the dream might be significant, Carla took one more stab at trying to find Jessie’s father, whom he hadn’t seen since he was a child—a child nicknamed “Nubbin.”

You see where this is going, don’t you? Carla found the news article about Nubbin the dog. Immediately, the cast of characters expanded to include some long-lost and unknown siblings; the plot thickened to reveal a tragic past; the string of coincidences twisted into a brief time years ago when the two Jessies, father and son, actually lived within two blocks of one another. And a reunion of epic proportions was in the making.

But the story still isn’t over. Many questions are yet to be answered: Will Nubbin’s leg have to be amputated? Will the siblings accept one another? Will the old man lose his home?

Time will tell. But no matter how it unfolds, the bond between Nubbin and his companion certainly sparked the compassion of a lot of people and pulled them together, if only for a short time. If not for one little dog, one lonely old man may never have stumbled upon the happiness he experienced when his first Nubbin returned home.

[Photos by Charles Bertram.]

With Gratitude for My Readers…

It’s Coming!

The countdown to the big feast of gratitude means turkeys everywhere are looking for a way out of Dodge. Do ’em a favor and serve a vegetarian menu this year.

The Month of Thanks Giving

Americans celebrate Thanksgiving this month, though giving thanks can happen any month, any day. Today I’m especially grateful I’m not a Wood Duck. Let me explain.

If you watched Nature’s “An Original DUCKumentary” last night on PBS*, you already know what I mean. It’s not the low survival rate of “Woodies” that I’m grateful not to contend with. (Nearly every animal larger than the tiny ducklings—eagles, herons, foxes, turtles, even fish—find them to be tasty treats.) Would I were a Wood Duck, I wouldn’t get past my second day of life—the day each diminutive, flightless Woodie follows its mother’s voice to the water.

First step? Climb out of the nest, which is in a tree cavity, and jump to the ground from a height of up to 89 feet. This is what inspires my gratitude, for I would be the first Woodie left behind.

I don’t have the kind of courage it takes to jump 89 feet into the unknown. Or maybe it’s faith I lack. Whatever. I simply don’t have what it takes to be a Wood Duck.

Makes me happy to be human.

* If you missed “An Original DUCKumentary,” try watching it online. The ducks are jaw-droppingly gorgeous, the footage often borders on extraordinary, and Paul Giamatti is a terrific narrator.

[Top photo by Nature’s Poetry; bottom photo from The Inn at Bowman’s Hill.]

The Ties that Bind

One of the letters published in Tim Russert’s Wisdom of Our Fathers describes a father who quit school in sixth grade because his own father voiced increasing contempt for education and beat his son for bringing home books.

This is not the first time I’ve read of such a reaction to reading. Even yesterday at the library I witnessed a mother rebuking her young daughter for wanting to borrow more than two books. The girl tried to explain her choices, but the mother didn’t bother listening. She held firm in her position.

My goodness. I can’t even imagine who I would have turned out to be had my father not encouraged my love for books and reading—a love initiated by my mother, who religiously read stories to me during my pre-K years. Most of the quality time I spent with my father involved books and libraries. Books remain my favorite leisure activity and my trusted source for expanding my knowledge base. My fascination with interpreting the printed word paved the way to interpreting music notation and to (proof)reading for a living.

I’ve much to thank my father for, but I think I’m most grateful that he shaped and nurtured my bond with reading and learning. He created more than memories for me. He fostered my desire for continued personal and intellectual growth, armchair traveling, creativity, and pleasure.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. No tie or soap-on-a-rope for you this year. Just a genuine, humble thank-you.

[Art by Eugene Manet.]

Counting My Blessings

When I stepped into the shower today, I started imagining how differently my day would unfold were I headed to the Oscars tonight. My anxiety over my appearance, my self-consciousness over my demeanor, my fear of the Fashion Police, my worry that I’d lodge my foot in my mouth (after catching my heel in my hem).

No, thank you.

My grooming today was nothing more than making sure I didn’t smell and was fully clothed. I’m grateful that my attendance at the Oscars remains firmly in my imagination and I’m free from worry tonight.

What are you grateful for today?

[Photo of Piguet evening dress by Richard Avedon.]

Seasonal Surprises, Seasonal Dividends

now visited us today for the first time. Fleetingly. It left before I had time to get excited about it.

I wonder if the rain, which has pelted us nonstop for days, was as tired of itself as we were of it and decided to try a new look.

Or perhaps the snowflakes, confused by the glut of Christmas decorations displayed since October, raced here today for what they thought was a late entrance. Realizing their mistake after materializing, they disappeared.

Either way, I’m happy to be sans precipitation this afternoon. I’m grateful for this lovely long Autumn of the Bluegrass—for being able to dress in layers rather than hauling out the thick woolens, for being comfortable enough to sit in the yard enjoying a book and hot tea, for the slow departure of color giving way to a splendor of texture in the form of nuts, berries, and seed pods.

“Good heavens, of what uncostly material is our earthly happiness composed—if we only knew it! What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons!”
—James Russell Lowell

[S from Industry.]

Thanksgiving Plenty: The Food that Binds

Thanksgiving 2010 seems like yesterday to me. From his deathbed, my list-making, eternally instruction-giving father supervised the kitchen proceedings. In his hyperspecific way, he detailed what he wanted on the menu and from which restaurant I was to procure it.

At first, I was crestfallen: No home-cooked holiday meal? Then irritated: I wasn’t fond of the food at the restaurant he’d chosen. And embarrassed: The “restaurant” was a CHAIN!

But how can you not fulfill the wishes (or demands) of the dying? Upon reconsidering the situation, I realized the upside: If my father didn’t like the food, it wouldn’t be my fault. Grateful for that, I decided to add a few homemade dishes to the mix as backup—if not for my father, for my husband.

As it turned out, the massive quantities of food from the restaurant languished in the refrigerator while my father repeatedly requested the corn pudding, sweet potato casserole, and pumpkin pie I had made (without his instruction) in his kitchen.

I was secretly happy about this, though not just because the homemade won out over the chain restaurant. It felt good to be able to provide some pleasure to my father’s difficult days and sustenance to his deteriorating palate. It was especially meaningful—to me, anyway—that those particular dishes represented a host of Thanksgivings past, recollections permanently attached to my childhood and happier times. The time before the losses—the deaths and the divorce. Those dishes were traditional to our family’s gatherings, and now I had connected my father’s final Thanksgiving celebration to a sunnier, familial reminiscence.

Today I’ll be making pumpkin pie, corn pudding, and sweet potato casserole again. I’m grateful for the role they played in last year’s meal, and I take comfort in the memories they conjure that I will continue savoring for many years and meals to come.

May Peace and Plenty be yours this Thanksgiving.